Four titmice flit about the yard. The dead elm twigs that are closest to the lilac have acquired a greenish tinge. A beetle’s zigzag flight.
A fawn follows its mother through the springhouse meadow, spots like stars on a pelt dark with moisture from the sopping-wet vegetation.
A squirrel is exploring the dead elm at the edge of the yard, racing to the shakey end of each decrepit branch and peering into the abyss.
Overcast and cold. A firefly floats past the porch with his abdomen pointing down, lamp at the ready for any unscheduled onset of darkness.
Clear, 44°F. The doe who I think lost her fawn makes small, anxious grunts as she plows through the wet meadow in front of the springhouse.
51°F. In the side garden, my clump of New York asters has been flattened in the night, stripped stalks splayed to all points of the compass.
A catbird solos in the half-light while wood thrushes trade lines. Small white moths visit the dame’s-rocket. Today, a funeral and a picnic.
The clear air makes for sharp contrasts between shadows and patches of sunlight, sewn together by three goldfinches on a high-speed chase.
Has anyone ever exclaimed, “The dock is in bloom!”? Fuzzy green spires with a hint of orange, surrounded by bobbing candelabras of brome.
Overcast and humid. A bracken frond beside the road has turned yellow as a Yield sign. A raincrow calls over and over at the woods’ edge.
Through every opening in the wall of woods, white mounds glow in the dim light: mountain laurel at its peak of bloom, the best in years.
Sun in the treetops where a catbird improvises. From the lilac, the song of a towhee, incorporated seconds later into the catbird’s stream.
Clear, 54°F. Squirrels leap through the dripping branches, chase each other up and down trunks. A distant traffic noise of cicadas.
The evening primroses I got from the Amish are in bloom: x-shaped stigmas extended like hands from the centers of large, plain faces.